The County Commission will vote Tuesday on whether or not to adopt the updated harassment policy.

County Administrator Jack Brown said the county routinely reviews its policies, but the county did take into account what was learned from the fire department investigation to make updates to this policy.

"Given what we're going through with the fire department, we took that into consideration in looking at how we would modify the policy and should modify the policy," Brown said.

The new policy cuts down the time in which a harassment complaint must be investigated and makes the county administrator responsible for determining if any corrective or disciplinary action is needed once the investigation is completed, rather than county bureau chiefs or the human resources manager.

Brown said the idea was to get complaints passed up the chain-of-command very quickly.

Under the old policy, a report looking into the complaint was required to be completed in 45 days. The new policy would cut that to 15 days, unless it was determined more time was needed for the investigation.

"Sometimes, if you have too long of a period without doing a review, very quickly things can escalate without people realizing that it's serious," Brown said. "If you give somebody 45 days, they take 45 days. If you give them 15, then at least you're going to address it much quicker."

The old policy also required employees to file a complaint within 30 days of the alleged harassment taking place, but the new policy gives no specific time frame, only saying a complaint "should be filed immediately upon discovery or awareness of discrimination."

The new policy also makes it a requirement for a manager or supervisor to immediately report any harassment or discrimination to the human resources director. The old policy did not have that requirement.

"If it's handled appropriately at a lower level, then that's fine, but if needs to come up to my level, it will," Brown said.

Brown said there could be times when the two parties can work out an issue before going through the process, but other times, interviews and an investigation are required to find out if the complaint is part of a larger issue.

The county's investigation into the harassment complaints at the fire department revealed that former Chief Patrick Grace was aware of the harassment complaints and even met with the female firefighter's father, but no action was taken.

The investigation reported a male firefighter, Christopher Watson, allegedly harassed the female fighter over several months, making comments that women should not be firefighters and talking about a "rape game" during training.

Later, Watson was involved in a fight with another male firefighter, Lt. Joseph Martin, at the Tin Cow in Pace, where Watson reportedly broke Martin's jaw.

Both firefighters had meetings with Grace after the fight, but the former chief never filed any documentation of discipline for the fight.

The county's investigation resulted in the firing of Watson and Grace, and a formal reprimand of Martin.

Now, Escambia County is searching for a new fire chief and is down to the final three candidates: Stephen F. Cox of South Bend, Indiana; Russell Nail of Melbourne, Florida; and Paul Randall Smith of Mobile, Alabama.

The candidates will visit the county later this week to tour the Public Safety Department, meet local firefighters and conduct a final round of interviews.

When the investigation into the fire department became public with the firing of Grace on Jan. 30, Brown told the News Journal that all future complaints would go directly to his office.

The proposed policy would formalize the directive Brown made with a vote from the County Commission.

The commission meets at 9 a.m. for its agenda conference meeting, and its regular meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Ernie Lee Magaha Government building in downtown Pensacola.